Monthly Archives: October 2013

Big Brother

You know who might save the newspaper business? Edward Snowden. His leaks are being consistently doled out as major front page stories. In the latest chapter, we learn that the NSA (along with its British counterpart) has secretly broken into the links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers. “By tapping those links, the agency has positioned itself to collect at will from among hundreds of millions of user accounts, many of them belonging to Americans. The NSA does not keep everything it collects, but it keeps a lot.”

+ The Snowden leaks have created a narrative that is at once geopolitical and deeply personal. The New Republic’s Judith Shulevitz explains why you shouldn’t spy on your kids — even though you can: Big Mother is Watching You.

+ According to a recent survey, young people are a lot less concerned about privacy. But they are…

Because the holiday season is upon us, it’s always a good time of year to start thinking about ways to contribute to society.

That’s not to say that you shouldn’t think about good deeds all year long, but, let’s face it, most of us go for the good when the snowflakes start to fall. This year, Amazon is getting in on the holiday giving with a new service called AmazonSmile.

Like this:

Steam turned ten this year and is about to close off the year with a giant bang. Presently, there are more than 64-million people using Steam. That’s an impressive number, and it’s a number that beats out Xbox Live‘s users. Why is Steam so darn popular? It has a lot to do with free and available games. It also has a ton to do with simplicity.

The last Battlefield title was released in 2011. Now, a new Battlefield game is here. Battlefield 4 is more intense than Battlefield 3 in every way, and this game comes with a lot of bonuses that you’ll love.

Here in Canada, we don’t have any more pennies. Starting next week, though, we will have Bitcoin ATMs. That’s right, Canada is going to have the world’s first Bitcoin ATM. The ATM will be installed in Vancouver outside of a popular coffee house. One the machine has been set up, Canadians will be able to exchange Canadian dollars for Bitcoins.

It was said, back in the days of Asimov, that computers will one day think like the human brain. Vicarious, a start up based in San Francisco, has set out to prove that the future is, indeed, here. How? By creating a computer that can crack CAPTCHA codes.

So, it’s not every day that video games become a part of real life – or, rather, a concept from a video game. Often, it’s the other way around with parts of real life entering the storyline of a video game.